3 years ago

I have a Kasimir the Lone Wolf deck in which all creatures have no special abilities. I want to build it in a way that I exchange my creatures (except Kasimir) for my opponents' creatures. Any suggestions?

3 years ago

Sleazebag, your last point is exactly why I think we need to stop considering what decks commanders are usually run with, and rather consider what the commanders actually contribute to the decks that they're run with. Kasimir the Lone Wolf would probably never get played in most games so he's tier 5. He contributes basically nothing.

For a comparison; Narset, Enlightened Master has decks entirely built around her because her ability is very powerful and enables ridiculous combos. Without her, half the decks she's the head of couldn't even exist because they often use very high costed cards that are really hard to cast without her.

3 years ago

Lorderos23: Spoken as a player who doesn't play dedicated infinite combo decks.

Yes, when people go infinite mana, they pretty much always have a win off that infinite mana. Know why? Because they don't bother to go infinite mana UNTIL they have the piece that lets them win with infinite mana. Tasigur means they ALWAYS have access to that piece. Try playing an infinite mana combo deck in modern/legacy and you will see just exactly what a huge impact this has.

Cutting a combo down from 3 cards (2 card for infinite mana, 3rd card to abuse mana) to 2 cards is HUGE. Being able to CUT all the infinite mana abusers from your deck completely due to not needing them and dedicating those slots to more digging is also huge. If you don't understand the difference in competetive viability between a 2 card combo and a 3 card combo you honestly have no job commenting on tier lists.

If you play him as a normal commander, he is pretty mediocre. Gives ok value by gaining back a few cards from your graveyard and has access to good colors, but overall that's not backbreaking. He gets some benefits from being a good politics commander though (give me this removal to deal with that permanent).

The moment he becomes a dedicated combo commander, he becomes crazy good.

Also, your claim about him needing a good start/being weak to disruption makes absolutely ZERO sense. A poorly constructed deck is weak to disruption / requires a good start. A good deck is ALL about making your deck as reliable as possible. BUG has the MOST access to fixing, ramp and card advantage/abuse of all 3 color combinations. It is fact the most resilient color combination short of Prismatic. Tasigur wins at instant speed the second he resolves with infinite mana available, ignoring all disruption short of split second. You HAVE to counter him, or you lose. He will win with all your disruption still on the stack. Tasigur's delve ability can even reduce the commander tax making him even MORE resilient, as he will often cost 1 mana.

Another problem that is not accurately captured in this tier list is that color combinations alone are enough to put certain decks in a high tier. All decks with blue can be tier 2, even if that commander is Kasimir the Lone Wolf. Mostly because it doesn't need to cast its commander to have a highlander deck good enough to compete. Needless to say, all 3 color commanders in tier 3-5 with blue don't belong there. Hell, Ixidor, Reality Sculptor as Penguin_Gamer_1 mentioned is Tier 2 for this reason.

The issue is then if you are going to be listing commanders based on their viability against OTHER commanders in the same color combination, or if you are going to list them based on their viability as a whole, for example I have no problem rating cards like Kasimir in tier 5, as they are strictly worse than pretty much any other UB combination possible, even though it could be a nasty deck if the creator tried.

Hell, all 5 color decks can be Tier 1 regardless of their commander.

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